Small Audiences
by sabrinabeckenreed
Summary: Malificent is too young to tell stories with the adolescent fairies. They pick on her too. She still finds ways to become a magnificent story teller - until a horrible prank leaves her with ugly horns on her head. Banished from her home tree along with Flora, Fauna, and Merriweather, and still just as left out, she's still determined to become the best story teller ever.
1. Chapter 1

She never did want to be a dragon.

When the other girls spun stories, they gathered in a circle. One would begin slowly with a simple phrase to start the magic - something like, "Once, long ago. . ." or "It all began when . . ." The circle was the main thing. One person to tell. A few to listen, or many to listen, it really didn't matter how big the circle might be. When the story edged toward the end of the beginning, and merged into the beginning of the middle, a shadowy shape might appear in the air above the girls. And when that shape took form, great gasps of amazement flew from girl to girl. As long as the teller kept the story intact the images remained, or grew, or even got more vivid. The teller might even begin to see out of new eyes.

That was the most wondrous of all. Except Malificent was too skinny and too small to be allowed in the circle.

The other girls, with eager eyes and broad hips always stood so close together - and wedged themselves even tighter when Malificent approached - that Malificent could catch only brief strings of words on a straying breeze, or sometimes see the corner of an image way up high between the pointy ears of two towering listeners.

But, oh the beauty! Enormous lilies which made the sounds of bells as they nodded in the wind, thundering herds of grey horses passing through a waterfall which transformed them into milk-white unicorns, or the glowing colors of a sunset swirling itself into all the confections for a King's feast. Words like, "enchanted sabre" or "battle to the death" or perhaps "twinkling like all the stars on midsummer night" kept Malificent rooted to the spot just outside the circle where the older girls tolerated her presence - just barely.

Fairies grew oh so slowly. In three hundred years, Malificent still hadn't grown much. She could reach no higher than the waist of the shortest story teller.

Mothers did not take the opportunity to have babies unless the fathers returned from their knowledge quests when the comets flew through the skies. The coincidence of events was rare - centuries or often millennia apart. Malificent's own birth was something of a fluke. Her father returned home without the others, dogged by owls the whole way. He had forgotten the ancient rune stone and the fathers couldn't interpret the ancient signs without it. But since the comets flew on his arrival, Malificent was the only child born to any fairy family for many, many years.

Mother called her a miracle. Father called her Magnificent. In fact, her true name was Magnificent, but her first attempt to pronounce her own name went a little awry, and all the fairies had called her Malificent since she could remember.

It was hard to be the only child among fairies in training.

"Why can't you ripen the fruit evenly?" fretted her Orchard teacher.

"I can't reach both sides of an apple. My arms are too short."

In fact, Malificent's arms ached from stretching to the sides as far as they could reach, and she hovered next to a peach for twice as long as any other fairy. But without another five hundred years of growth, she would simply produce half-ripe fruits.

"How in the world could you produce such spindly mushrooms?" her Fungi teacher asked, with a scratch to the top of her head.

"Well, the dance calls for hips swaying. Only mine don't sway very far." Malificent hung her head.

"The only suggestion I have is to move in circles about the right size for a plump mushroom. See if that helps."

It didn't.

"Where have you put your wing-gloss?" her Physical Education teacher demanded.

Any louder shouting would have been audible to humans (fairies only hear small sounds like insects, breezes, and the running of sap in the trees.) Malificent quivered with fear. She knew that glossy wings were the one prevention for painful wing-cracking, injury, and grounding of all flying fairies. She was so small, she simply couldn't carry a pouch large enough to fit all her supplies, so she had left the gloss at home in her walnut shell. She had on an extra thick coat of gloss, but was too frightened to point that out to her teacher.

Malificent had to borrow wing gloss that day because there was a rain storm. She could have died from the embarrassment.


	2. Chapter 2

Something magical came from story-telling practice. When a fairy could hold the same image in the air over the circle for long enough, she could sometimes inhabit the image. One fairy who told of an octopus made the image so real to the others - and to herself - that she could see and feel the world around the octopus. She could sense what it was really like to have tentacles and suckers rather than arms and hands, wings, legs and feet. The story that day stayed in the minds of all the fairies for many weeks, it was so vivid. And the fairy who told the story knew she was ready for the next level of education. This story-reality turning point was called a pinnacle and making a good one was the first major step toward becoming a creator fairy.

Malificent ached to have her pinnacle. But for three centuries already, she had been excluded from the circle by the fairies who were two or three times her own age.

"Why don't the girls let me in the circle?" she asked Stelila, who sometimes had more patience than the others.

"Dear little Malificent, none of us even knew a circle existed until our half-millennia mark. And we didn't enter a circle until we had mastered the simple forestry you're working on. How are your mushrooms? Last I saw, they were nearly right."

"They're ok," Malificent said glumly. She twitched her wings in a fairy-shrug.

"I can help you perfect the growth magic if you like," Stelilia offered.

"Well, my mother says I have to practice breezes for the rest of the day," Malificent said. She kicked a grain of sand like a sad human child might kick a pebble.

Just then, Fauna and Merriweather called to Stelila that robin-hatching time had finally come. "I'll check with you tomorrow, then," said Stelila to Malificent, and the two touched wingtips and noses to say goodbye.

Malificent walked home to waste time. Flying was easier and more enjoyable, but she was in a sour mood, and didn't mind suffering a little if it meant putting off breezes practice.

"Mother, there's two hundred more years until I can even think about joining the story circle. By then most of the others will have moved on to their next level. It's just not fair."

"Ah, my dear. It's not the size of the circle that matters, only the quality of the thought."

"I know." Malificent rolled into a tiny ball and rolled her wings entirely around herself, feeling very much like a caterpillar in a cocoon that would never open.

"Sulking only spoils your appetite. And it doesn't get you out of practice." Mother's tone of voice was not one to argue with, and Malificent groaned as she slowly uncurled from her self-made confinement.

"Yes, mother."

As if to cheer her, mother offered, "You may have some free time down by the pond if your breezes come out properly ten times in a row."

Malificent wanted to make a hurricane - one enormous breeze to end all breezes - so she could be through with all the practice. But air was hard to direct, and ten times perfect was quite a difficult standard. She said, "Yes, ma'am," and got to her practicing.

Miraculously, the first ten breezes she swished performed exactly as directed, and Malificent was free for nearly an entire afternoon.

"That was splendid, dear," mother said. "And I have a special treat of morning-glory nectar for you to enjoy down at the pond."

This was a treat, indeed, and Malificent cheered up. "Thanks, mother. You're a wonderful fairy." Zooming faster than a dragonfly, she was by the pond and enjoying her snack before mother had finished her response - whatever it might have been.


End file.
